


I'll try to be satisfied just to walk close by your side

by macabrekawaii



Category: Batman (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, E rating because it's gonna get spicy, Eventual Romance, I miss going to bougie coffee shops when will this plague end, JASON TODD SAID ACAB, Jason Todd is a Werewolf, John Constantine - Freeform, M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Injuries, Romance, Slow Burn, Swearing, Yes I said SLOW BURN, improper use of hot dogs, or at least ACAD all cops are DELICIOUS, so much fucking swearing, somehow Jason is not arrested for public nudity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:19:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26292511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabrekawaii/pseuds/macabrekawaii
Summary: Jason is bitten by a werewolf and turns to Dick for help figuring out what the hell is going on. Good thing Dick loves dogs.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 78
Kudos: 229





	1. Who's that I see walkin' in these woods?

**Author's Note:**

> Whooboy okay baby's first foray into posting multi-chapter fics. The tags will be updated as I go so please pay attention to those as this is definitely going to veer into both violence and sex. Awooo! 
> 
> Finally combining my two favorite things: Jason Todd and WEREWOLVES! I am completely obsessed with werewolves and will consume nearly any media with them. I have a half-sleeve tattoo for Ginger Snaps, the best werewolf movie of all time. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy this as much as I am having a great time writing it. 
> 
> Titles are from "Lil Red Ridin Hood" by Sam the Sham, the quintessential horny werewolf song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason wakes up naked in the park with a very mysterious bite along his side after very mysteriously fighting a giant werewolf the night before. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAVE HAPPENED!? He turns to Dick for help. It's fine. Dick was in the circus. He's seen weirder.

Jason wakes up naked. This would normally be no cause for concern as he typically does sleep naked. Unfortunately, he is very atypically not in his bed, not wrapped in the warm embrace of a fluffy blanket, head rested on well-loved pillows. No. Jason wakes up naked, body streaked with mud, laying partway in a bush about fifteen feet away from a hiking trail in the hills surrounding Gotham.

Jason groans to life, sits upright, and takes in his surroundings. It’s just past sunrise and the goldenrod color of morning has yet to fade into the heavily gray-tinged blue that sits on top of Gotham like a shroud.

“Well this is new.” Jason’s voice feels like gravel in his throat, sounds distorted like he just smoked a whole pack of his fave menthols. He scratches behind his head and notices his hands feel clammy and weird. Looking down at them he bites back a startled noise.

Jason’s hands are covered in thick patches of dried blood. The acrid smell of it tells it’s several hours old, dried thick and clumpy to the backs of his hands, over his palms and embedded deep beneath his fingernails alongside…. Well things that Jason is not going to overthink right now, the word viscera clawing at the forefront of his mind.

“Okay okay okay step one, where am I?” Jason’s heart pounds in his chest and his head feels fuzzy in a way he can’t quite place, but no amount of disorientation can tamp down the Bat training buzzing inside of him. He rises up to a proper crouch and looks around, sees a garbage can and a bench not too far off, next to a dusty hiking trail. The garbage is marked GSP, Gotham Sanitation Project. He can smell fresh cut grass and burnt coffee, the kind you get from a shitty kiosk. He figures he’s in one of the big parks just outside of Gotham city proper, which means there’s a subway entrance somewhere near the exit.

Next thing, clothes.

Jason figures “man mugged by nudist for his clothes” on the 6pm news will probably garner less attention than “large man nude and covered in blood rides subway” so he formulates a plan. After creeping through as much brush as possible and sprinting across greenway and trails when he can’t (and thank God it’s early o’clock because the park is nearly empty at this hour), Jason sees a public restroom not too far from the exit of the park. He darts inside and waits inside one of the stalls until someone around his size comes in. The lucky candidate appears to be a businessman of some kind, maybe cutting through the main park on his commute. He’s wearing a dark brown suit with a navy shirt and a lighter baby blue tie. Clearly someone not raised by Alfred, who would have an aneurysm at the sight of a light tie with a darker shirt. The man’s not built anywhere as sturdy as Jason, but the height’s just about right, and the important parts should fit well enough. Jason carefully creeps out of the stall and incapacitates the man in a sleeper hold before he’s even spotted. Good, maybe this will spare this poor guy some trauma from being choked out by a naked, blood-soaked maniac. He drags the unconscious man to lean against the wall, locks the door, and gets to scrubbing his hands and arms as best as he can at the sinks.

Jason takes stock of himself in the wide mirror. He has some kind of….mark on his left side, like a piece of him was torn off and knit back strangely. He swallows thickly with realization. He knows exactly what it looks like. Like he was bitten. There’s four obvious puncture marks and then a long band of thick scarring curling under his ribcage down towards his hip. He doesn’t remember having a scar there, and the skin looks angry and pink, like it’s healed, but only recently. It’s completely closed, not an open wound or anything. Jason pales, splashes his face with the coldest water the faucet will provide. He’ll deal with this later. He’s still trying to piece together how he got here, what he was doing last night. Everything feels hazy like the edge of a hangover pressing on his mind before fully waking up, but man, he wishes he were simply out drinking and paying for it. He’s done a lot of dumb shit while drunk but definitely never woken up bloody and naked miles from his apartment. That he’s aware of anyway.

He strips the guy of his shirt, pants, and shoes, not bothering with the jacket or tie. The pants are a loose fit everywhere but his thighs, so he snags the belt too. The shirt, well, it’s not an entirely lost cause but Jason can only really manage the middle three buttons as his shoulders strain at the fabric. Good enough. At least the shoes are only a half size too small, his toes curl a bit at the edges, but it’s manageable.

Okay okay okay. He should go home. But something about that feels wrong. He doesn’t have his keys, not that he needs them to get inside any of his safehouses. He doesn’t have any money, so that’s going to be fun trying to get anywhere. He doesn’t have any of his toys so he’s gonna have to stay street level. He doesn’t have his phone. Fuck, his phone. He has no idea where that is, no idea where anything he had last night is. What the FUCK happened last night!? Well at least his phone was so encrypted whoever finds it will just think it’s bricked. Where is any of his gear? His clothes? His helmet? The gear alone has so many safety triggers someone would have had to cut them off of him while getting electrocuted to get him out of it. And his helmet…. Fuck. How did anyone other than him get his helmet off? Alright. Fuck. Problem for Future Jason.

Jason trudges down into the subway and hops the turnstile, gets on the first train that pulls up without paying any mind to where it’s heading. He lets himself relax a bit, tries to calm his buzzing head by listening to the low susurrus of the train rumbling along its track, the early commuters mumbling to themselves, the snap of a newspaper being read. It’s early enough the train is nearly empty, and Jason has plenty of room to sprawl out and get his bearings. He still feels _really off_ , can’t quite pull the fuzz off of the night before. There’s a woman seated across from him, older but not quite elderly, and she’s staring at his neck like he has something horrible on him and oh shit—Jason tries shooting her an award winning smile, the kind Bruce trained him to flash to photographers as a kid. Something about it just comes off feral and horrible when he realizes he missed a large swath of dried blood from behind his ear down to his collar. Paired with the rumpled trousers and barely-buttoned shirt, he’s radiating pure Subway Creatures of Gotham vibes. He sheepishly turns away and starts to actually pay attention to which line he’s on. He knows this one, but why? Come on Jason, get your brain working already.

Well, shit.

This is Dick’s trainline. This is the one that stops at Dick’s main apartment in Gotham, in the bougie little neighborhood with too many bistros and lots of tiny dogs and the coffee shop that sneers at him when Jason orders a black coffee. Is Dick in Gotham right now? Jason tries to think about the last time he saw him. Was it recently? Shit, it was. It was two weeks ago, on patrol. The two of them ran into each other on the same stakeout, had been bickering about the best way to take down a newly formed drug ring, a bunch of amateurs really. Nightwing had, of course, wanted to play it by the Bat book—get in, take them down, gussy them up for the GCPD, then get out. Jason wanted to send a bit more of a message, maybe the kind that knocks off a kneecap and made them reconsider the pros and cons of starting up an operation in Gotham. They had compromised on “no excessive force” and Jason pushed the boundary of it by leaving a nasty bullet-wound on the ringleader’s left arm, right through the tendon, one that would definitely keep him in a sling a few months at least. Jason had slept well that night. But man had Dick been angry.

_Why can’t you stick to the plan, Jay?_ Jason had stood his ground, mocked him behind his helmet. _Why do you always have to push too far?_ Dick had looked hurt though, and Jason cared a lot more than he wanted to admit. Jason could fuck around on Bats’ territory all he wants, leap over whatever line Bruce laid out for him. But Dick. He never likes to disappoint Dick. They hadn’t spoken since, but that wasn’t unusual. If anything, Dick would have hounded him if he had a grudge. The silence meant he had moved on. It felt…. Nice? To be in a place like that? No news is good news is new to Jason, and whatever tenuous relationship he had with the tangled mess he called a family, he was going to do his best not to fuck it up.

The train slides closer to Dick’s exit and Jason’s body makes a decision before his brain has time to catch up. He’s almost fully alighted at Dick’s station before the gears of non-thought grind to a halt and Jason realizes he’s gotten off the train. Well, he’s already here. Nothing for it then.

Normally, Jason would love nothing more than to scale the side of Dick’s apartment and pop in through the window but with no gear, shoes that are barely staying on his feet, and last night still a dull haze in his mind, Jason decides to go in the front door and pretend he’s being mentally stable even if he looks the complete opposite. He’s sure Dick’s had worse visitors at worse hours. A certain leather-clad vigilante with a computer for a brain comes to mind. Jason slips into the building as someone exits.

He decides to take the stairs, Dick’s on the top floor for… obvious reasons… and Jason figures the jog couldn’t hurt. He’s still trying to pull at the curtain dropped between now and last night, trying to remember exactly how he woke up fucking naked in a bush. Before the sprint up even registers, he’s at the door to the top floor. Did he take the stairs three at a time? Six at a time? What the _fuck_. This seems…. Very fast. He’s not even winded. It’s ten floors up. Jason continues to save the chaos for Future Jason. He has enough going on in his whirring, exhausted mind right now and all of it concerns a certain blue-eyed sort-of brother of his. Whatever happened last night, and whatever the hell is going on, the early hour is quickly catching up to him and it’s obvious he had not slept the night before.

Jason buzzes the door of Dick’s apartment and shuffles from foot to foot, still feeling completely fucking out of it. He scratches at his neck, tries to flake off the last bits of dried blood as best as he can before realizing all he’s accomplishing is getting it embedded under his nails. Gross. He buzzes the door a few more times, hoping to hell Dick’s home. He hears some shuffling inside, a muffled “Be right there!”

The door swings open.

“Jason what are you doing here? Are you alright? I’ve been trying to reach you since last night, you went off the grid and Oracle couldn’t find you. What’s going on? What time is it?” Dick looks far better than he has any right to at this hour. Jason isn’t sure what time it is, but it can’t be past seven by now, likely much earlier. Dick probably only just got in a few hours before. He’s wearing black pajama pants and nothing else, standing barefoot and sleep-mussed, gazing blearily into the light of the apartment hallway, his dark lashes blink against sleepy blue eyes. He looks perfect. He looks beautiful. Jason has forgotten how to speak.

Jason swallows thickly before talking. His voice still feels weird and rasping in his throat.

“I lost my phone.” Yeah okay Jason, that’s what you focus on here, great great great. Dick seems about as excited to hear this response as Jason was delivering it.

“You lost your phone? That’s it, you lost your phone? You completely went off the grid last night, dropped off the face of the earth, and you show up at my door at fuck o’clock to tell me you lost your phone?” Alright well at least sleeping beauty is definitely wide awake now. Dick eyes Jason suspiciously, like he’s fully realizing just how unhinged Jason looks right now. “Get inside.”

Jason makes his way into the apartment and drops himself onto the couch, body sagging into the plush leather. He toes off the ill-fitting shoes and puts his bare feet up on the coffee table. Dick shoots him a sour look.

“Why do you look like someone I’d drop off at a homeless shelter?” Dick sits down next to him, peering at the bits of dried blood above his collar. He pushes Jason’s legs off the coffee table and stretches out on the couch, back against the armrest, his own legs across Jason’s lap. Jason shifts awkwardly at the proximity, the weight of Dick’s legs across his body. He feels caged in, trapped, in a way he can’t quite parse. He wants to lean into Dick’s warmth beside him, slide in closer, but also maybe leap off the balcony. Dick’s barrage of questions are not helping. “Why do none of your clothes fit? These aren’t yours.” Dick nudges the edge of Jason’s thigh, pinching the material between his toes.

“Very observant, Boy Wonder, Daddy Detective must be very proud.” Jason yawns loudly, too tired to bite back his snark.

“Funny, Jason. Seriously what’s going on? I know you were checking out some disturbance up near Bristol and then around midnight you just… disappeared. We couldn’t spare any bodies from the almost literal tire fire Penguin had going on by the docks and figured you’d turn up quickly but… are you alright?”

Jason scrubs his hands over his face. Was he alright? He didn’t feel alright.

“I don’t know Dick.” His voice is soft and more earnest than he’d like. “I dunno. I feel like shit. I don’t think I slept. And I can’t remember last night.”

There’s a pause and a few moments go by where neither man says anything. Jason just melts further into the couch and Dick inches himself closer.

“Is this blood yours? Did you take any hits to the head?” Dick leans in to reach up behind Jason and runs his fingers through his hair, smooths them along the back of his skull. Jason hums and leans into the touch. It’s far from the first time Dick’s been tender with him, but it’s the first time it’s ever happened in his apartment with no shirt on. Jason does his best to ignore both of those factors.

“No, nah.” Jason murmurs, not wanting to break the contact. “I don’t think this blood is mine.”

Dick gives him another once-over, his eyes softening. Jason doesn’t know whether to feel grateful or offended that Dick’s numb to Jason showing up covered in someone else’s blood. “Alright little wing, why don’t you go hop in the shower and I’ll grab you something to wear. Catch a few z’s in my bed, I’ll hit the couch.”

Jason is too exhausted to argue, too bone-tired and worn out from whatever ordeal he’s going through to fight Dick on his hospitality. The stuffed-cotton feel in his head is expanding, and everything feels hazy around the edges. He stands wordlessly, letting Dick’s legs fall off his lap, and shuffles into the bathroom.

When he’s done showering, there’s a clean, fluffy towel and a pair of basketball shorts on top of the toilet. They fit alright, better, he knows, than trying to squeeze into any of Dick’s pants meant for a waist almost half his size. He stumbles into Dick’s room and flops on top the blankets, more burritoing himself up in them than tucking himself in. Through a haze, he hears footsteps, some mumbled words, but they aren’t registering.

Jason falls asleep before Dick even closes the door behind him.

_Teeth. Teeth in the darkness. Teeth and yellow eyes in the darkness. Teeth in a bloody maw and yellow eyes in the darkness. Scratching tearing biting. A howl. A scream. Teeth and yellow eyes in the darkness. A growl rumbling up from within, bubbling out like black ichor, spilling like blood over a distended jaw. Teeth and yellow eyes in the darkness. Blood on his face. Blood on a long, tapered maw. Blood, black in the moonlight. Teeth. Fangs. Darkness._

It’s dark when Jason wakes up. Dick’s room has blackout shades, as any nighttime vigilante worth their salt should, but there’s no light in the room save for the very dim glow of a few scattered electronics.

It takes a minute for Jason to rub his eyes and realize that there’s no lights on. Because he can see as well as if there are. So that’s new. Jason’s no stranger to weird shit happening to him. You don’t go for a jacuzzi soak in a Lazarus Pit and come out unscathed. Jason is very, very _scathed_. But he’s never been able to see in pitch darkness before. He sits up in the bed—unfamiliar, too soft—and tries to get his bearings. Clarity hits him like a punch in the face.

He’s in Dick’s apartment. He came here after he woke up in the park, after he

fought a really big, really weird wolf last night. Fought a really big, really weird wolf last night that took a big fucking bite out of his side, right through his Kevlar, like it was nothing. Without thinking, Jason reaches down, runs his hand over the thick pink gash he saw in the mirror at the park. The skin is only slightly raised, like all his old scars, like it’s been there for years.

_Teeth and yellow eyes in the darkness._

Well, fuck.

Jason has never been a man fuck around when it’s important. Even before he died and came back to life through uncertain and mysterious means, he was a man of reason. Direct, to the point when it matters. He gets out of the bed, pads on silent feet to the living room. Dick’s sitting on the couch watching some movie on his TV, a bowl of cereal perched on one knee. He’s dressed, but casually, like he has nowhere to be. He must have shuffled around the room while Jason was asleep. Jason was not usually a heavy sleeper, has never been. Jason looks out the wide sliding glass door that leads to Dick’s balcony. It’s evening, the Gotham skyline darkening like a bruise. How long was he asleep? The whole fucking day? Jeez. Jason lets out a long, shaky exhale, letting go of the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

“Ah good morning sleeping beauty.” Dick turns to Jason, tossing him a friendly smile.

“Dick I think I’m a werewolf.” Yeah this will go over well.

“I’m sorry you what?” Dick puts the bowl on the coffee table and stands up but doesn’t move.

“I said I think I’m a werewolf. I think I got bitten by a werewolf. Or some…. Genetically altered wolf that’s passed something onto me? IDK Dickie we deal with a lot of weird shit.” Jason goes into the kitchen, just a zone of tiles and appliances really in the open floorplan of Dick’s apartment. There’s a long countertop separating it from the living room. Dick comes and sits on a barstool, leaning forward.

“Very funny Jason, what’s going on? You show up at my apartment at six am looking like hell, you sleep all goddamn day and don’t even wake up when I’m calling your name? I had to check your damn pulse to make sure you hadn’t died on me.” Dick’s clearly trying to seem nonchalant, but there’s an edge to his voice that belies his tone. The hair stands up on the back of Jason’s neck as the scent of worry, of fear, hits his nostrils. It’s dizzying. “Come on be real with me.”

“I am being real. I don’t know what’s going on. Something happened last night and I feel… different. And I lost time, like a lot of time, like all of last night.” Jason feels like he is starving beyond belief so he goes to rummage around in Dick’s disorganized fridge, seeing if there’s anything worth eating. There’s some eggs, a few veggies. A bit of cheese. Good enough. Jason grabs everything he needs and starts fiddling with making an omelet, the repetitive and familiar motions of chopping vegetables calming his nerves.

“Okay, okay. What happened last night? You said you got bitten? A werewolf?” Dick has the tone he takes when Bruce has just told him aliens that shoot lasers out of their butt are invading Gotham and they need to find an ancient artifact buried under Saskatchewan to save the day. It’s a weird mix of _holy shit are you fucking kidding me_ mixed with the calm air of a Star Trek character spouting technobabble. It makes Jason feel nauseated.

“I was on patrol, nothing much was really happening on my beat with all the shit going down at the docks- not that I wanted in on that mind you,” Jason snorts and Dick laughs. Jason had listened in on the comms, knew it was a full party over there, and didn’t feel like dealing with B or any of the others. “But I caught a GCPD radio about a large animal in the park. It sounded big and dangerous, I thought maybe Harley was out with one of her fucking hyenas or something.” Jason keeps chopping at the small pile of vegetables as he talks, looking only at Dick. “So I get there and there’s just this wolf savaging what I guess used to be someone’s pet poodle. It was hard to tell. It was real chewed up by the time I got there. And this thing was huge, way bigger than it should have been. So I figure it’s some kind of science experiment right? One of our local wackadoos has cooked up something new. Whatever, I’ll put it down. But it’s strong, Dickie, stronger than I would have thought for even something that big. And it was smart as hell. I got a couple of shots into it and it just kept coming at me like it was nothing, like it wasn’t even hurt. And it definitely knew when I was out of ammo. It was like it was waiting for it, counting the shots. It just kind of circled me a while until I ran out, until I threw everything I had at it. And then it was on me. I know I got…. I know I got a knife, the big one, right into its neck, right as it was biting me. I pushed as hard as I could, fuck, I don’t remember, but there was _so much_ blood.”

Jason hears a gasp and realizes Dick is staring at him with wide, terrified eyes.

“Uh Jay you alright there? You just uh. The knife.”

The kitchen knife is embedded a good quarter inch into the knuckles of Jason’s left hand. Like he chopped too far and just kept going and didn’t notice. He _hadn’t_. Blood starts to well up in the cuts. It’s pretty deep, but he’s had worse. Before he has another moment to register what’s happening, Dick’s running back from the bathroom with his medkit and slapping a wound wrap to his hand.

“JASON WHAT THE FUCK.” Dick is yelling and the sound reverberates inside Jason’s skull like a sonic boom.

“I—I didn’t notice.” Jason says sheepishly, quiet. He really hadn’t. The pain is barely registering, and even for Jason, so used to pain, so used to wounds, this is not normal. This is so far from normal. He had pulled out of Normal Station long ago and the train is careening off the tracks. He presses down on the wound wrap, trying to press the coagulant into the cuts across his knuckles, sees a little red welling up at the edges of the bandage, dripping onto Dick’s nice countertop.

“It’s okay, I mean, are you okay?” Dick’s still out of breath from sprinting back and forth from the bathroom. His brows furrow and he looks so genuinely concerned Jason feels like his heart is about to flip over. “Are you okay?” Dick repeats.

“I have no idea what I am, Dickie.”

“Well you just told me you think you’re a werewolf. You sure you didn’t take a crack to the head last night?” Dick comes around into the kitchen properly and takes Jason’s hand in his, holding the wound wrap down himself. Jason’s hand feels huge against Dick’s slender fingers. Jason feels itchy and hot. Feels like he’s about to burst out of his skin. He breathes in and all he can focus on is Dick. Fuck, Dick. Dick smells like the floral shampoo he uses, like BO layered under a citrus deodorant, like uncertainty, like sickly-sweet worry, like…. like something Jason wants to devour whole.

“My what big hands you have Jason.” Dick runs his thumb across the top of the wound wrap.

“Dickie shut the fuck up I know what you’re doing.”

“Aw come on little wing, don’t be such an angry puppy.”

A low and completely inhuman growl bubbles out of Jason and Dick looks sincerely startled. Dick watches Jason, eyes wide. Jason can smell the fear radiating off of him in sharp waves, drowning out all his other senses. He feels like he can hear the sound of Dick’s heartbeat picking up, the woosh of blood tensing in his neck as he holds himself rigid and oh fuck, he really can.

“So you’re not fucking around, are you?” Dick’s voice is quiet, barely above a whisper.

Jason sighs and stops fiddling with the med supplies. The pain in his hand is already subsiding, like maybe he didn’t need to wrap the wound at all, and he feels at once bewildered and relieved.

“H-how did this happen?” Dick’s heart is still rabbiting in his chest and Jason wants so badly, so desperately, to make sure Dick knows he won’t hurt him. But Jason isn’t so sure of that himself. Everything feels like he’s moving through static, like there’s a buzzing around him that he can’t quite turn off. Jason shakes his head - _like a dog_ , a voice inside him shouts- to try and clear his thoughts.

“I’m not sure. I fought what…. What I thought was a big wolf last night like I said. It bit me pretty badly, on my side, and I just blacked out. I figured it was just a bit of bad luck but I woke up a long ways from where I started withoutanyclotheson.”

“You left out the naked part earlier.” Dick moves to the couch and sits, pats the space next to him. Jason feels his own tension release even though he can still smell Dick’s fear. There’s something else there Jason can’t place.. He knows Dick Grayson is no coward though, so Jason follows and sits with his legs tucked under him, like he wants to take up as little space as possible, keeping to himself. Like if he touches Dick in any way, he isn’t sure what’s going to happen. He feels woozy.

“Didn’t want to get too racy too quickly, I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

Dick snorts.

“Wanna finish my cereal?” Ah, feigned normalcy, Dick’s specialty. Dick holds out the forgotten bowl of mostly soggy marshmallows, and if his hand trembles a bit, Jason doesn’t mention it. Jason just tilts the bowl back and finishes it all in one gulp.

“Alright. Let’s think about this logically. You fought a creature. Weird shit is happening. This is nothing new. We’ve had giant actual bat people flying around the city. We’ve seen hyena men. So maybe someone is splicing up genes, maybe someone is making new super soldiers. We’ll figure it out. It will be alright. We can go to the cave, run some tests. You’ll be fine.” Dick smiles at him, warm and genuine, even as Jason picks up the prickles of uncertainty Dick is clearly trying to tamp down.

Jason sets the empty bowl down and looks at Dick. He feels dizzy and hot, realizes he has been feeling hotter and hotter for a while now. Like something is bubbling under his skin trying to get out, like he’s boiling from the inside.

“I don’t feel fine.” Jason croaks out the words, feels like his mouth isn’t shaped right anymore. He gets up and walks past Dick, heads through the wide glass of the sliding door onto the balcony. Up this high, there’s a light, cool breeze and it prickles his skin into goosebumps. The city looks peaceful, beautiful even, the lights and neon glittering in the soft velvet of early night. The sky is clear, inky and starless, and the moon looks like a perfect round pearl in the darkness. Jason feels something unfurl inside him.

He turns back towards Dick, feeling hot, impossibly hot. He realizes he’s shaking. His hair feels damp against his forehead, he feels sweat drip down his back, running down his spine like rain. Every muscle in his body is suddenly aching, groaning with tension like he just finished the hardest workout of his life, or got hit by a fucking truck. Pain ripples through him and he feels like he’s going to puke. He feels like he’s going to burst. Jason falls forward onto hands and knees, feels like his spine is trying to burst out of his back, feels like his spine is breaking in ten places at once. He has never known pain like this, and pain is an old friend. He tries to say something but only manages a whine, a pleading sound, like a dog searching out its owner when he can’t see them. He looks up, locks eyes with Dick.

He recognizes, with horror, that Dick looks terrified. He hears a scream, and everything goes black.

_Teeth and yellow eyes in the darkness. Teeth and yellow eyes and the scent of fear. Teeth and yellow eyes and the feeling of warm flesh against his body, hands digging into fur, hands pushing him back. Yellow eyes in the darkness, mouth shut. Mouth can’t open. Can’t move. Whining. Snarling. Can’t move can’t move. Tearing sounds. Hands digging into fur. Safe? Safe? Safe? Warm flesh against his body. Warm flesh holding him down, safe? Mouth can’t open. Safe? Warm flesh against his body. Something stinging something biting something sharp something hurting. Sleep._

\--

Jason wakes up on the floor of Dick’s bathroom. To say everything is wrecked is an understatement. The mirror is completely smashed, shards of glass litter the floor, the countertop, the sink. It’s in the tub, it’s on the toilet. The shower curtain has been torn in half, ripped to shreds. There’s claw marks on the tiles in the shower. There’s lines of blood, but not much. Jason’s naked again. What’s fucking new? At least Jason’s not outside. He cautiously steps over the glass to the door, standing on his toes. The door won’t open. He pushes against it but it won’t budge more than the tiniest sliver, like something huge is in front of the door.

“Dick? Why am I locked in the bathroom? There’s a lot of glass and I don’t have any shoes.” Jason hears shuffling, hears dragging and the scraping of furniture against the floor. It goes on for a while. There’s no response. He can hear grunts of exertion, can hear swearing under breath. “Dickie?”

Finally the bathroom door bursts open with Jason putting a little too much force on trying to push it open without any resistance. He tumbles out into Dick’s living room. Dick looks completely fucking wrecked. There’s scratches all down his torso and he’s bruised up like after a particularly bad fight. He has a welt above his left eye and his pants are torn at one knee so badly they hang open. He looks dazed as hell. He looks manic. He looks so incredibly attractive and Jason is so very, very aware that he is standing there completely naked.

“Jason,” Dick speaks slow, voice sugar-sweet, and extends an arm holding a blanket. Dick’s looking past him into the horror show of his bathroom. Jason takes it and wraps it around his waist, letting it hang down to his ankles like a very awkward skirt. “Jason I think you might be a werewolf.”

“How did you get me into the bathroom?” Jason looks around the living room and it’s about as tidy as the bathroom. The couch is pushed at a weird angle, nowhere near its proper position, like it had been… oh it was in front of the bathroom door. Okay, that tracks. One of Dick’s knick-knack shelves is flipped over and there’s Funko Pops and books strewn everywhere. The coffee table is on its side. Half the blinds are missing on the porch window. It looks like a very large, very angry animal tore the place up.

“I had to jab you with one of those tranqs we keep on hand for Croc.” Dick throws himself onto the couch, heedless of its position half in and half out of the living room space. “It took ten minutes for you to go down.”

Croc goes down in less than three from that stuff. Jason swallows, feels like his throat is filled with the glass from the bathroom. As if reading his mind, Dick gets up and grabs a glass of water from the kitchen. The walk isn’t far-- the couch is dragged almost right in front. Jason sits down on the floor, his back against the couch. He lets his head drop back against a cushion. Looks like everything he’d been stowing away for Future Jason is about to be fucking processed.

“Your eyes are the wrong color,” Dick says softly as he hands Jason his water, settling back on the couch.

“Huh?” Jason downs the entire glass in one go, turns to Dick, tilting his head up towards him. He feels fuzzy, like he did the day before, the same sort-of not-quite hangover. Like there’s a film over everything he can’t quite pull away. “What?”

“Your eyes, they’re the wrong color. They’re usually blueish green, like turquoise. Now they’re uh, tan? Yellow?” Dick thumbs at Jason’s face, right where he has a scar under his right eye from a piece of shrapnel. Jason looks up at Dick. His own eyes are a sharp bright blue, clear as a summer’s day or ocean water that’s as warm as a bath. Dick smells sour like sweat, but the acrid sharp fear is gone. Jason shudders as Dick swipes a calloused finger along his cheekbone. “They’re not uh, people colored.”

Since when did Dick notice what color Jason’s eyes are? Jason flinches away from Dick’s touch.There’s too much to process all at once. Everything feels like so fucking much. Jason looks around the room again. He can hear the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of the analog clock in Dick’s bedroom. The scrape of a neighbor moving furniture through the wall. The sound of Dick’s breathing, slow and deliberate, so clearly using the counting techniques they were taught to use to stay calm, as children, a lifetime ago.

“People colored?” Jason lets his head loll back against the couch, keeping his eyes on Dick, trying to focus only on him.

“You know what I mean, Jay. They’re the wrong color. This is fucking weird.”

“Oh I turn into a giant dog last night and you have to wrestle me down but my eyecolor is what’s freaking you out.”

Dick laughs, loud and long, big wheezing gasps, like he’s been holding it in and can’t contain it, like it’s the only thing that’s keeping him from screaming right now.

“That was no fucking dog. You’re a wolf. And a huge one.”

Well, fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be updating this soon? IDK probably early next week? Sooner if Fenrir blesses my demonic hands to write wolfy shit? I have a lot of it written already, and it mainly needs some tweaks and pokes, so we're looking at about ten chapters? I made an outline! I have plotting! I did research and I have people actually looking my shit over for once. DEDICATION. LOVE. WEREWOLVES. I have no idea what I am doing? Question mark? Please comment I need encouragement thank you!!??!?!?!?
> 
> Edit: lmfao this was not updated "early next week"


	2. You're everything a big, bad wolf could want...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Jason clean up some messes and make a few larger ones in New York City with the help of a magical friend. And Jason eats someone? Maybe? Read to find out! It's a whole damn party!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO OKAY SO THIS TOOK A LITTLE BIT LONGER THAN EXPECTED but it's here baybeeeeee hope you enjoy.
> 
> HAPPY FULL WOLF MOON EVERYONE!!!! (it's tonight! how fortuitous!) 
> 
> HEADS UP this chapter has a little bit of violence and gore in it but y'all are here reading a werewolf story so you knew that was coming right!? Nothing is too explicit I promise but if you are squeamish, I'd skip the part with the cop. Yehaw!

It’s hard to process a complete psychological breakdown when you’re surrounded by broken glass and not wearing shoes.  
  
“Stop pacing and just sweep the glass before I stab you with it!” Dick’s standing at the edge of his kitchen holding a broom and a dustpan, still wearing his torn pajamas (after foisting his last clean pair at Jason) and an expression that can only be described as _unimpressed_.  
  
Jason, meanwhile, is having a full-tilt meltdown. Awesome. Scourge of the Gotham underworld all but blubbering in a pair of Dick’s most heinous novelty pajama pants (Batman themed, natch).

  
“I-I’m really fucking sorry I wrecked your apartment and showed up unannounced and I bled on your towel and turned into a giant fuckwolf and fucked everything up and-“ He grabs his hair and twists it at the root. The pain does little to ground him. Jason feels untethered, freewheeling towards (further) imminent disaster. It’s just after dawn, just after the extreme _reality_ of the situation has sunk in. He’s a werewolf. What the fuck!?

  
“You really think I care if you fuck up my towel? Where are your priorities?” Dick screeches as he thrusts the broom and dustpan into Jason’s shaking hands. Everything is a wreck. Dick’s apartment looks like a very large dog came through and ran amok—so, exactly what happened-- the back of the couch is chewed up, the bookshelf has deep claw marks down the side, and the vertical blinds to the patio are in shambles.  
  
“Dick I—” Jason grips the wooden handle of the broom so tightly the wood creaks.  
  
“No, clean first. Talk after. It’s alright, we got this.” Dick shoots Jason a smile so bright he could howl at it.

  
It takes a few hours to get the apartment back into some semblance of order. Glass is swept up, debris vacuumed away. Jason keeps trying to do absolutely everything himself, frenetically running from room to room. It isn’t until Dick literally locks himself into the bathroom that Jason focuses on just the living room.

The blinds are a lost cause. Jason tears down the ruined ones and gets the remaining slats working properly but the whole thing looks like a smug grin with some teeth knocked out. He sets the bookcases back upright, gets to picking up the assorted knickknacks strewn about the floor. It’s mostly collectibles and photos. Dick was never much of a reader, not the way Jason could devour a novel in a day, read and reread his favorite stories countless times until the characters lived in his head and not just on the page. There’s a few classics, one or two technical manuals. But really, Dick just has a lot of self-indulgent Robin merch (vainglorious bastard) and the occasional, now slightly cracked, framed photo of friends and family. Jason tries not to think about how none of them are of him. Dying has a way of taking you out of the picture.  
  
It’s late morning when they finish, having started egregiously early sometime around dawn. Jason’s just done tidying in the kitchen, putting on a much-needed pot of coffee and finally actually getting to that omelet when the door to the bathroom creaks open. Dick’s wearing nothing but a soft tee shirt and his boxers. His hair is an untamed mess, and he still has that wild look in his eyes that greeted Jason first thing before they started cleanup. Dick looks tired in that way when you know someone is running on fumes and trying very, very hard to cover for it.  
  
“I’m gonna go crash for a few.” Dick mumbles, mostly to himself, and shuffles his way into his bedroom.  
  
Jason finishes up in the kitchen. He eats a little omelet (sans any ingredients that got uh, bloodstained the night before), has some coffee, and spends five goddamn minutes pretending everything is normal and okay before he realizes _he can hear Dick breathing_ in the other room. That from a whole room away, Jason could _hear_ Dick’s quiet, even breaths as he napped.  
  
“You’re an idiot.” Jason says to himself, out loud, like an idiot. And he feels like an idiot—here he is absolutely obliterating the life of the one person he wants to get closer to. He supposes this is one way to go about it. Certainly he can’t be the first person to blunder into another’s life full steam ahead due to supernatural mishap, right? Maybe? Whooboy.  
  
Jason sits in the silence of early morning in Dick’s apartment, now barely put back together, and listens. He just lets himself drift for a while, listening to Dick’s shallow breathing as if he’s there curled beside him. It’s soothing to him in a way Jason can’t quite place, even if the fantasy of them being beside one another feels unreachable.  
  
Oh.  
  
Dick’s awake. Shit Okay. Should he go say something? Apologize? Yeah that’s the ticket-- go apologize. Jason heads to the kitchen and makes up a plate of food and a cup of coffee for Dick and goes to the bedroom hoping it’s not bordering on creepy that he can tell Dick is no longer asleep.

Jason freezes in the doorway.

“Dick I’m…” What Jason? You’re fucking what? Sorry? Sorry isn’t going to cut it when you’ve just obliterated the apartment and also likely the life of one of the only people in the world whose opinion of you matters. Jason feels hot, awkward. Embarrassed, but unsure what for. Everything, perhaps.

  
“The apartment will be fine Jason.” Dick reassures him. “It’s just stuff.” Dick says, mistaking Jason’s anxiety over Dick’s _existence_ for something far more tangible.

  
Jason makes a soft whining noise, like a dog that wants to cross a threshold but is too scared to do so without its owner’s permission.

  
“C’mere, little wing.” Dick shuffles up in his bed then sits like he used to when they were younger, when Jason was trying to fill a pair of scaly green booty shorts that never felt his size. Dick leans back against the headboard of his bed, legs splayed, and pats the space between them.

“Dick, I…” Jason’s mouth feels dry and clumsy. There is nowhere on this godforsaken earth Jason wants to be more than between Dick’s legs. Wait, that didn’t come out right. Or did it? Oh god. Oh fuck. Fucking hell. Jason feels his stomach knot in an agonizing twist of affection and desire. The hot feeling on the back of his neck refuses to budge. He places the plate of food and coffee mug down on the dresser and takes a step forward. Then freezes again.

Sometimes, when Jason first came to the Manor, when Dick was still around in fits and starts before fully pulling away from B, they would end up like this. Dick would find Jason after a particularly hard patrol, or a bad day at school, and insist Jason talk to him about it, in this position, his back to Dick’s chest in the expanse of Dick’s bed. Dick felt so sturdy and reassuring, a presence behind him solid and real. Jason so often felt liquid, molten, ready to seep into the floorboards and ruin everything he touched. But Dick never seemed to notice, or care. Dick spoke best through touch, through body heat and attention. He’d find Jason melancholy and drifting somewhere in the Manor or the Cave and invite him back to his room for a talk. They’d sit together, sometimes Dick would rest his chin on top of Jason’s head, sometimes he’d hold him, just a bit, with one arm gentle across his chest, always loose enough to know that he could slip away should he need to. It made Jason feel like he was going to sweat through his shirt, like he was somewhere he shouldn’t be allowed to be, not for any nefarious reason but because Dick had somehow mistaken him for a boy who deserved to be held. Here, now, it’s ridiculous. Jason has like half a foot on Dick these days and more than 50lbs of muscle. He feels his face heat up and he turns away, rubs at the back of his neck. 

  
“You’re being ridiculous.” Jason says out loud.

  
“If you’re even half as overwhelmed as I am, get your stray dog ass over here and let me give you a goddamn hug.” Dick shuffles on the bed, widens his legs, and looks at Jason expectantly like this is completely normal and he’s not inviting an absolute monster to come in for a snuggle.  
  
_A monster._ Is that what Jason truly is now?  
  


Jason lumbers over and makes his way into the space Dick has made for him. He sinks down low and leans back, the top of his head even with Dick’s cheek. His heart thumps in his chest so loud he is thankful to be the only one in the room with preternatural hearing.  
  
Dick’s breath his hot against the shell of his ear for a moment before he sits up straighter and settles his chin on top of Jason’s head, just as he used to. He wraps both arms across Jason’s chest and pulls him tight against his own. This is new. This is new and oh god Jason feels his cheeks heat up even more, his whole head is on fucking fire. Dick doesn’t say anything. Jason closes his eyes and inhales deeply. He can smell the warmth of Dick’s skin, the citrus tang that always hangs over him from his deodorant and aftershave, the bitter dried sweat in his hair and on his skin, the low hum of anxiety that seems to have sung through Dick’s veins since the moment Jason showed up a fucking mess on his doorstep. Dick’s heartbeat is an even thrum in his chest. It’s all becoming familiar, it’s becoming something Jason is afraid to lose, and that’s dangerous. Jason is _dangerous_ , always has been, but now? Now Jason feels untethered, freewheeling towards absolute disaster. There’s a monster inside him, more real and tangible than anything has ever been. Jason already felt borderline inhuman. You don’t come back to life, do the things he’s done, and get to keep your soul. There are voices whispering to him in green-breathed taunts and reminders, always there at the edges of himself. _You’re not real, Jason Todd. Jason Todd is dead. Nothing you do will ever matter_. And monsters don’t deserve love. That much is apparent. It’s all cliché bullshit, Jason knows, but it seeps into the marrow of his broken and reformed bones, into the cracks made by a crowbar, that no amount of time or magic or chaos or whatever the fuck will ever truly heal. Sometimes when Jason is running his chest feels like it’s on fire, his ribcage ten sizes too small, his heart pounding on the door trying to escape the empty chasm there. Jason leans back against Dick, against his warmth, against his sour citrus scent. Something inside him feels like it’s blooming, like it's growing ever larger, pushing its tendrils into the empty spaces. Jason isn’t entirely sure he should fight it.  
  
“We’ll figure this out Jason.” Dick’s voice is quiet and soft, hardly more than a whisper. “I’m glad you came to me. I’m happy to be here for you.”

  
Jason sucks in a breath, hopes it wasn’t too loud. It felt too loud, like he was gasping. The fuzzy feeling he hasn’t been able to shake for two days rears up and his head swims. Jason feels like every part of him is out of step with how he should be. What he should be. 

  
“I don’t deserve this.” Jason says, even quieter, his words tangled up in his throat like brambles scratching their way out of his mouth.

Dick shuffles again, sliding down in the bed until his face is level with Jason’s. Dick rests his chin on Jason’s shoulder and leans into the other man. His arms pull Jason against his chest a bit harder and he links his hands together, essentially locking Jason against him.

“Yes you do, little wing.” Dick sighs. His breath is warm across Jason's face.

Jason feels the painful tug of anxiety roll through his limbs, like he’ll need to claw himself away at any moment. He keeps still. Dick’s hair tickles the side of his face and Jason isn’t sure if he’s going to faint or scream. Instead, he reaches behind him and gets a hand into Dick’s hair, pulls his face closer against his own. It’s intimate in a way Jason is not familiar with. It’s intimate in a way that has Jason reeling more than anything else happening the last two days including his entire body shifting into a wolf. Werewolves? Supernatural? Whatever, who cares. Dick Grayson’s face is pressed against his own, cheek to cheek in some mockery of a slow dance. Of a romance.

“You’ve fought so hard to be who you are.” Dick cards his fingers through Jason’s hair again, lets his thumb linger through the white streak. “And against who you could have become. I could not be more proud of you.”

_But who am I becoming now._ Jason exhales softly, turning the thought over in his mind.

“Alright, enough Lifetime movie of the week, I get it, you’re not freaking out about this…. Supernatural shit.” Jason squirms up out of Dick’s hold and spins around to face him, hoping the blush in his cheeks reads as exasperated and not something else. “You had your cuddle, now what are we going to do?”

“I think I know a guy who can help.”  
  
*  
  
Dick immediately kicks his feet up onto the dashboard, sliding back in his seat with the languid ease of a housecat staking its claim in your favorite chair. Jason bites back the urge to shove his feet off, instead lets his eyes roam down Dick’s body, drinking in the way the other man sprawls so effortlessly. Jason always feels three sizes too big, like he somehow takes up too much space and not enough at the same time, like he’s only ever liminally wherever he is. He’s already in Jason’s sweatshirt—bright red and oversized to the point that Dick’s hiding his hands in the sleeves. They made a quick swing by Jason’s safehouse to take one of his nondescript cars, let Jason get a change of clothes. And apparently for Dick to help himself to Jason’s softest hoodie. Not that Jason’s complaining—something about seeing the other man in _his clothes_ makes something hot and not altogether unwelcome pool in his gut.  
  
“Can I charge my phone?” Dick asks, already plugging his phone into the USB connected to the center console.  
  
“Yeah whatever, put some music on will ya? It should connect to your phone if you boop the radio button enough times.”  
  
“If I _boop_ the button?” Dick repeats, his eyes light up, his mouth turns up into a half-smile. “Boop boop boop.” Dick’s voice is singsong as he pushes the input button.  
  
“Whatever Dickie, shut up.” Jason feels the warmth of a blush threaten to break across his face. He inhales slowly, trying to ground himself, but it only serves to make him hyper aware of the way Dick’s cologne wafts through the cabin of the car, seems to twine itself around Jason like a silky scarf, mixing with his own familiar scent from the hoodie enveloping the other man. He shakes his head then keeps his gaze forward, his jaw clenched just a bit.  
  
Dick scrolls around his phone, and Jason focuses back on the road. He lets himself hyperfocus on the feel of driving the car, the soft susurrus of the windshield wipers and the car gliding on the wet highway, so the first jangle of guitar barely registers as Dick chooses a song. It isn’t until the lyrics kick in that he realizes he just let the world’s biggest troll have the aux cord.  
  
_♫_ _I see the bad moon rising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightnin’. I see bad times today_ _♫_  
  
Dick starts humming along, tapping his shoes against the windshield with every beat. _  
  
_“Dick Grayson, I will fucking push you out of this moving car, I swear to fucking god.”  
  
“Aw puppy, want me to change the song?” Dick rolls his head to the side to look at Jason through his lashes. Jason glances over and his breath catches in his throat. Dick Grayson, annoying clown, infuriating fool, is stunningly beautiful.

_♫_ _Don't go around tonight. Well it's bound to take your life. There's a bad moon on the rise._ _♫_

  
“Don’t call me that. I want you to stop being a fucking piece of shit and take this seriously.” Jason frowns, he doesn’t mean to be an asshole, but he knows if he lets himself say even 1/10th of what’s fizzling in his brain he’s going to blurt out something he’ll regret. “Who are we going to see in NYC anyway? You just told me an expert and to drive. Who the fuck is an expert in this shit?”  
  
“A friend. Sort of. Kind of. Stop asking questions, he’ll help us.” Dick grouses and stops the song, shuffling through his phone until he puts on some kind of low-fi track. It’s not bad, not that Jason will admit it.  
  
“I have asked you one goddamn question. One. And you don’t see fit to answer.”

“It’s John Constantine.”  
  
“Of course it is.” Jason says, his voice flat with resignation. “Of course it is.”

*

  
Constantine’s apartment is, to say the least, a fucking nightmare. A fifth-floor walkup in the Bowery in a building that has more rats at the current moment than all tenants since it was built combined, it’s one of the shittier shitholes Jason has encountered in a long while. The hallways smell like boiled cabbage from forty years ago and he’s pretty sure he can hear the paint actively peeling away from the walls.  
  
Constantine greets them at his apartment door, like he knew they’d arrive at that exact moment. Fucking magic users. Constantine welcomes them inside with a deep, foppish bow. He looks rumpled but charming, a cigarette tucked jauntily behind his ear, and Jason winces at the way Dick beams at him.

  
Jason glances around the apartment while Dick and Constantine exchange overly familiar pleasantries, taking in the stunning amount of clutter. Books and trinkets line every shelf, every flat surface imaginable. Most of the books are in incomprehensible languages. Jason scans some spines quickly, recognizing only a few in Greek or Arabic. They seem to be in complete disarray with many on their sides stacked in odd, poorly balanced piles with packets of snacks strewn across. There is a large purple jelly dildo on the couch, laying proudly across two cushions. Great. Awesome. Love that. Jason perches on the opposite edge of the couch, trying to keep the entirety of his bulk on the armrest.  
  
“So what’s in it for me, love?” Constantine pulls the cigarette out from behind his ear and lights up, leering at Dick. Jason’s mouth waters as the scent of stale tobacco fills the air. He hasn’t had a smoke in two days, at least, hasn’t even thought about it until now, which is saying a lot for someone who plows through a pack a day. Who knew the supernatural could be so good for quitting cold turkey? “Not that I mind when such a pretty bird comes ‘round my parts but uh, what’s the incentive? You said you needed help of my persuasion and Johnny boy doesn’t come for free.” He tosses another lewd wink at Dick. For it, Dick giggles like a schoolgirl and Jason feels the tips of his teeth sharpen involuntarily. Well, that’s new.  
  
Jason picks up a random knickknack off an end table, an apple paperweight that catches the light oddly, and runs his thumb over the smooth glass. He tries to focus as intently as possible on the stupid fucking apple that’s probably a zillion years old and not the way that Constantine keeps smiling at Dick’s ass like he’s a starving man being served glazed ham at Sunday dinner.  
  
“Jason thinks he’s been bitten by a werewolf.” Dick says, as matter-of-fact as possible, like it’s no more than any other case. Something clicks and Jason supposes it really isn’t—Dick’s been around the block (and out of the solar system) more than his fair share. He’s seen some shit. He’s been in the game almost twenty years, Jason’s sure he’s discussed crazier things with crazier people. “Figured you might have some insight on how to either make the transformations stop or what we need to do moving forward.”  
  
Constantine chokes on an inhale of smoke, eyes going wide. “Jason’s been _what_!?”  
  
“Bitten. By a werewolf.” Dick puts his hand on Constantine’s arm, near the crook of his elbow, as if to reassure him he’s being serious. Watching Dick touch him makes Jason’s hackles raise, and he runs his tongue along his awkwardly pointed teeth wishing to taste copper.  
  
“Don’t be bloody ridiculous.”  
  
“I fought a werewolf and it took a bite outta me.” Jason moves to stand between Constantine and Dick and lifts his shirt, showing the faded scar of the bite marks. They look old now, no different than the glossy patches of raised skin that mottle most of Jason’s body. It’s only been two days, not even that. There’s the obvious imprint of teeth, jagged where his flesh was torn away. It’s gnarly, Jason thinks. No different than the rest of him. “One minute it was biting me and I was stabbing it and the next I woke up na—Hey!”

Constantine grips Jason’s face with his thumb and forefinger, pulling him down and forward, tilting his head back. Jason sputters as Constantine gets his hand on him, but lets the other man keep his hold. Constantine peers into Jason’s oddly gold eyes with a determined look. This close, Jason can see where Constantine missed a line in his stubble at the edge of his jaw, like a portion of stubborn lawn that escaped being mown.  
  
“Say you’ve got yourself bitten by a werewolf, eh kid?” He pulls Jason’s head from side to side, smushing his mouth just a bit. A calloused hand reaches up to caress the pointed cartilage at the top of one of his ears. Jason can feel the heat of the lit cherry on the other man’s cigarette near his temple. Constantine turns away from Jason, grip strong against his jaw, holding him steady. He peers into Jason’s eyes one last time before pushing him away and turning to Dick. Jason stumbles back, annoyed and bewildered.

  
“You know, Grayson, you may be a looker but you’re a proper idiot today.” Constantine takes a step back, crosses his arms and smirks at Dick. Dick just shrugs.  
  
“Excuse me?” Jason scratches at his jaw, feels his nails rasp against the coarse stubble there. Fuck, Constantine’s such an asshole. When he speaks, there’s a gravelly tinge to his voice like the hint of a growl. “I mean I know Dickie’s generally a moron, but why today?”  
  
“Well, it’s all about to go a bit arse over tit, isn’t it boys? Full moon lasts three nights.” Constantine takes another deep drag off his cigarette, lets the smoke swirl out past his lips before they curl into an absolutely shit eating grin. “But you knew that, detectives, before bringing a twenty-one stone wolf to New York City during the Hunter’s Moon, right?”

Dick laughs again, nervously. "The what?"  
  
“The Hunter’s Moon, the blood moon, mate. Lighting up the October sky, just a treat.” Constantine beams and takes a drag of smoke, lets it curl from his lips as he grins. “Get the fuck out of my apartment.”  
  
“Woah wait you’re not going to help us?” Dick almost stammers his words, looking a bit pale. “What’s going on?”  
  
“I’m gonna help you, alright.” Constantine moves to start pushing Dick towards the door. “Help you idiots get out of my apartment. Sundown’s in just a wee bit boys, and it’s about to be a real doozy.”  
  
“Constantine, I don’t know what you’re playing at but Dick here seems convinced you’d help us and you seem to know fuckall about anything. Ain’t you a wizard or something?” Jason moves to loom over Constantine. He can smell the fear in the room, acrid and sharp, pouring off of Constantine in almost nauseating waves. What a coward, Jason thinks, what a charlatan. “Now tell us what you know.”  
  
“What I _know,_ boy, is that in about ten minutes you’re about to be a very, very bad dog and I don’t have a big enough rolled up newspaper for it. And the lot of you aren’t paying me, besides. So, shove off. Awright? Be seeing you!” Constantine makes a wiggly motion with his hand and suddenly Jason and Dick are outside his door in the hallway. Fucking magic users!  
  
Jason twists his fingers in his hair and pulls, hoping for the shock of pain to ground him just a bit.  
  
“CONSTANTINE, YOU USELESS FUCK!!” Jason pounds on the door, a growl pealing past his lips without care. His fist strikes the wood hard enough to leave a small, broken dent. “OPEN THE FUCK UP.”  
  
“Well, that was annoying.” Dick says as if this is somehow a minor inconvenience and that Constantine had not just told him Jason was about to go on a bloody rampage through New York City as a mindless wolf.  
  
“YEAH, WELL, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FROM SOMEONE WHO LOOKS LIKE HE MUGGED A HOMELESS GUY FOR HIS COAT.” Jason snarls.  
  
“Hey, hey Jason calm down, calm down.” Dick’s voice is soft, if a little shaky. He moves to Jason, rubs his hand down his spine to the small of his back. “We’ll figure something out.”  
  
“What will we figure out!? WHAT!? It’s like he said—I have minutes until this shit gets real fucked up and what then!? You gonna chase me around NYC while I, I dunno, eat babies or whatever the FUCK it is monsters like me get up to!?” Jason’s sweating, he can feel his hair matting against his forehead, curling up a bit. The buzzing that’s been at the back of his mind seems to envelop him now like a cocoon.  
  
“Jason, you’re not a monster.” Dick reaches up, runs his thumb along the coarse stubble at Jason’s jaw. Jason breathes through his nose, exhales slowly. Dick smells like Jason’s sweatshirt wrapped around everything that makes Dick _Dick._ Jason bites back a groan. He catches Dick’s eyes. He feels like he could fall into those pools of blue and swim for days.  
  
“Yeah well then what the fuck am I, Dickie?” Jason asks, his voice falling further into a growl. He closes his eyes and leans into Dick’s touch. “I dunno what I am anymore.”  
  
“You’re you, Jason.” Dick leans in, presses his lips to the side of Jason’s cheek. Jason turns his head, just a bit, just enough so his lips ghost across Dick’s without quite touching. They breathe sharing the same air. Jason feels a bead of sweat drip down his brow, can hear the way Dick’s heartbeat has picked up to pound in his chest, the same as Jason’s own.  
  
There’s a loud crash.  
  
“FOR FUCKS SAKE.” Constantine shouts as his door slams open. Dick startles and jumps back, leaving a good several inches between himself and Jason. Great timing, wizard. Constantine steps forward into the hall and in one fluid motion moves both his hands in a circle in opposite directions. A gold light glows for just a moment before Constantine slaps two fingers to Jason’s forehead where the light seems to shrink and brand his skin without heat. The light absorbs into Jason and is gone.  
  
Jason feels like someone just hit him in the head using a sparkler the size of a fist.  
  
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?” Jason shouts, his voice gone ragged around the edges.  
  
“A binding spell, a- a lock on a box. It might help you keep your mind, I don’t bloody know I’ve never had to use something like this before.” Constantine turns to Dick. “I’m sorry, I was very rude, please forgive me and all that.”  
  
“Will this help Jason?” Dick asks, quick and to the point and ignoring nearly everything the other man just said. He looks sheepish, blushing, like someone who just got caught doing something he shouldn’t. Jason sighs and feels like his whole body is under a broiler.  
  
“It might, I mean it should. Yes.”  
  
“Then what do we do now?”  
  
“Run.” Jason says, more a broken, feral sound than words. “Run!”  
  
Jason thinks he hears Dick say something but it doesn’t register over the sound of his blood pounding in his ears, the sound of his bones cracking within him.  
  
And then everything goes dark.

Oh wait. It **doesn’t**.  
  
It doesn’t?!  
  
This is…. Different? Jason feels like he’s looking out through someone else’s eyes. Everything is distorted and hazy, yet also somehow clearer than ever before. The bright flashes neon and color fade from the city replaced by muted yellows and blues. He’s outside. He has no idea how he got outside but he is most assuredly outside on the street. All around him are scents and sounds that feel overwhelming but above any other he can pick up on _fear afraid angry confused_ straight ahead of him. He shakes his head, feels the way his fur shakes along his muzzle. That’s weird. Okay. Dimly, a part of him thinks he is shaped somehow not the way he should be shaped. He can’t quite remember what that other shape should be. Above him, the moon hangs yellow and bright in the inky, purple sky. He’s faintly aware that he’s lost time. What is time?  
  
Jason howls.  
  
There’s a man in front of him, shouting. A man in a uniform, a man with a gun. A weapon! Threat! THREAT! This man wants to hurt him! Jason growls and snaps his jaws, lets his tongue loll through the spittle forming at the edges of his mouth. Get back random dude, get back. You are not my intended prey.  
  
Where’s Dick? Dick! He has to find Dick. Dick! He thinks he can hear something, something that gets through to him, something _he should know_.  
  
“---ASON!!! ”  
  
Jason sniffs at the air, follows the trail of something musky and familiar to a figure in the distance. He can see Dick up on a fire escape, waving at him? Jason tries to pry himself away, tries to pay attention to Dick but the scent of fear coming off the policeman in front of him is just too, too good. The man is fat and covered in a sheen of sweat that only serves to make his scent waft ever stronger to Jason’s nose.  
  
There’s a clattering sound and Jason turns just a bit to see Dick again, jumping up and down on the fire escape.  
  
Dick looks angry. Scared? His face is hard to decipher but the scent that hits Jason is all _fear_ all around him. It’s different somehow than the man in front of him, the man quaking and looking at him in terror. Dick is afraid _for_ him not of him. Dick is his friend. Dick is more than his friend. Dick is what he should be like. _Human._ Jason tries to will himself back to human. The sensation is weird, like tensing every muscle in your body in the hope it will make you relax after. Nothing immediately happens. Jason shakes his head, feels his fur bristle in the chill night air. Something in him crackles and starts to give way, like plaster being chipped away, by his having tried to shift. Jason feels himself slip further out of reach, feels himself slip behind something simple and easy and ancient and _canine_. It’s easier to let go. It’s easier not to be anything but what he is.  
  
He howls up at that incandescent moon and with its echoes he chases the last dregs of his humanity into the night.  
  
_Teeth and yellow eyes in the darkness._  
  
*

  
Okay, so Jason just turned into a giant goddamn werewolf, _again_ , and crashed his way out of Constantine’s apartment out into the NYC streets and Dick’s spent the better part of the last two hours trying to play cat and mouse (or wolf and uh… well, Dick tries not to think about it) with Jason around SoHo and Chinatown. There was a very unfortunate run-in with the front window of a Chinese BBQ joint where Jason may or may not have crashed through it and eaten his body weight in hanging ducks but other than that things are going pretty smoothly.  
  
Well they were, until the cops showed up. What else is new?  
  
Jason’s currently out in the street staring down a police officer who seems very ready to shoot him in the face and Dick needs to think fast to distract Jason away from the guy before something really terrible happens. So far the only casualties for the night are a few parked cars and the window of that fine roasted meat establishment and if Dick has any say in the matter, he’d like to keep it at that. Alright well also props to Constantine for some quick thinking and well-timed magic whatevers because he’s been able to, for the most part, keep people away from Jason and Jason away from people. Most of it just looks like a flashy light show (“Because that’s all the razzle dazzle _IS_ ” he can hear Constantine shouting) but whatever it is, it’s kept Jason pretty occupied.  
  
Alright, anyway, Jason’s about to go toe to toe with what looks like Officer Dunkin Donuts out there and Dick’s gotta think fast.  
  
Dick leaps up to grab the last rung of a fire escape and flips himself up onto the platform. It’s a bit rickety, a little wobbly under his weight and definitely not up to fire code but holy shit, now is not the time to worry about that kind of thing.  
  
“HEY!!! UH, WOLFY! YEAH YOU!” Dick shrieks into the New York City street, hoping the wolf currently staring a man down will give any fucks about him yelling at it. “HEY, OVER HERE!” Dick waves his arm over his head. The wolf pays him absolutely no mind beside a quick head tilt and continues advancing on the cop in the street. Why the hell did he think this would work? Across the street he can see Constantine duck behind some cars and a large, abandoned hot dog cart, his fingers doing the weird fiddly thing that usually means he’s conjuring _something_ or having a nervous breakdown. Maybe both.

“HEY!!!!!!! JASON!!!!! JASON!!!!! JASON!!!!!” Dick hops up and down, and for it Jason pays him a brief glance. For a moment Dick thinks perhaps this will be alright, that Jason will focus on him. But the wolf lets out a loud, mournful howl and something about its eyes shift in the darkness, seeming to glow.  
  
“Aw, fuck it.” Dick leaps back down to the street, using a parked car to vault himself out into the road. Gotta think. Gotta think. Gotta stop Jason from eating that cop no matter how much Dick knows New York City police are absolute fucking pigs. Oh. OHHHHHH. Dick has an idea. A possibly really, really, really, _really_ stupid idea.  
  
“Alright there, alright, good b-boy.” The cop is shaking, just absolutely batshit terrified. Jason is snarling and snuffling all around the porcine officer, just breathing in his scent with what seems to be complete relish. The cop is shaking so much his gun rattles in his hand, sweat pouring down his brow. “S-stay back. Come on you animal, stay back. I’m warning you!” The cop’s reserve snaps and he fires a round into Jason’s front leg. The bullet strikes but seems to serve only to enrage the wolf. Jason lunges forward and snaps his jaws.  
  
Suddenly, all Dick can hear is horrific screaming, like a wounded animal. Dick makes a break for it, bounding across the street to duck down with Constantine as quickly as he can, using the momentary distraction. Peering above the car, he can see the cop is now on the ground, shrieking and wailing, clutching the bloodied, bitten-off wrist that once led to his right hand.  
  
Constantine looks even worse for wear than he usually does, which is probably a good thing seeing as he just narrowly escaped a werewolf several times across several blocks. Dick has to give him props—however squirrelly he was back in his apartment, he’s more than thrown himself into the fray outside. He had a few narrow misses with Jason, trying to lure him away from storefronts and PEOPLE, and he’s done a great job on their current block, using wards to make everyone flee the area. Constantine’s got a cigarette dangling from his mouth, already half-smoked and burning away, and two more tucked behind each of his ears. He looks bruised, sweaty, and a little dazed.

“I don’t wanna worry you, love, but you might want to speed up getting our boy Talbot over to the park so I can set up a barrier around him, much as I enjoy watching him chow down on the local coppers.”  
  
“Talbot?” Dick has no goddamn idea what Constantine is talking about. But what’s new?  
  
“Oh, you are so lucky you’re beautiful, Grayson.” Constantine sighs and kisses Dick on the cheek before making a ducked-down sprint for the park at the end of the street. Okay, whatever. Stay weird, weirdo.  
  
Well, it’s now or never. Dick pops up, goes to stand behind the hot dog cart. He fishes a wet, luke-warm hot dog from inside the main bin and holds it over his head.  
  
“I got something way tastier than the rest of that cop, I promise buddy.” Dick shakes the hot dog in the air as triumphantly as possible, hopes its bizarre watery meat-smell makes its way to Jason. Jason tilts his head in that curious dog way.  
  
“Yeah that’s right,” Dick says as Jason’s head fully snaps up, his muzzle wet with blood, “yeah focus on me. You want this?? You want this hot dog?? I got sooooo many hot dogs in here.” Dick rattles the cart, just a bit, and Jason opens his muzzle. The cop’s severed hand plops out of it, lightly chewed, the gun still held in a rictus-grasp makes a clattering sound as it hits the ground. He won’t be getting that put back on. “COME ON! COME GET SOME DIRTY WATER DOGS--- OH FUCK.”  
  
Jason bounds towards Dick with a speed henceforth unseen by Dick in any canid member of the animal kingdom. Dick breaks off in a run, pushing the cart ahead of him as he careens towards the park a short block down.  
  
“OH SHIT OH FUCK OH SHIT.” Somewhere in the back of Dick’s hindbrain he feels like he owes Alfred a thousand dollars for his penny-a-swear jar. As a kid, he’d only racked up five dollars, total, before he went off to college. Jason owed that within three weeks at the manor and had then sworn about not having any money of his own to pay it off until Bruce sighed and handed him a crisp $5 bill. Dick was rather enamored with that story, told to him by Alfred over tea many years ago. He’s not sure Jason knows he knows.  
  
“OH GODDAMN FUCKING SHITTY FUCK SHIT.” Dick screams as he races down the street, all but using the wheels of the hot dog kart like a scooter. Every now and then, he turns to hurl another hotdog behind him and his breath catches in his throat as he watches Jason gobble them up, barely pausing from his run.  
  
He’s nearly at the park and whatever Constantine has been doing seems to be working because there are no people around as far as the eye can see. Constantine had muttered something about a compulsion spell, something that made people _need_ to run as far away from this shitshow as possible and Dick can’t help but feel more than a little envious as he hoists the cart up over the lip of the curb and starts flailing his way into the park proper.  
  
Jason’s a little way behind him now, distracted by Dick just dumping _all_ the contents of the cart out at him into the street. But it means Dick’s just pushing an empty cart into the park and he has no clue what to do next and hopes beyond hope that John Fucking Constantine has a PLAN. Oh boy.  
  
“Oi! Pretty birdie! Over here!” Constantine flags him down near the large fountain at the center of the small park. Thank goodness for New York City green spaces—the fountain area is circled by a wide, asphalt ring surrounded by benches. There’s plenty of space to trap a wolf, even one as enormous as Jason. Constantine is standing on the edge of the fountain doing more of his wiggly hand things that the more Dick watches, the more he feels his stomach sink to wonder if it’s all just a bunch of lewd hand gestures.  
  
Dick’s out of breath—he hasn’t stopped moving for about two hours—and he hunches himself over a bit as he speaks.  
  
“What… is your….. plan….now?” Dick huffs out, not bothering to glance behind him to see if Jason’s there. He figures _he’d know_. _  
  
_“Oh, so you liked my plan before, huh?” Constantine smiles at him. It’s almost charming.  
  
“Whatever you did to Jason didn’t work.” Dick says, sourly.  
  
“No, I think it did, just not in the way we expected. Beastie seems to be a bit more in control of himself this go around, right? Bit less inclined to go for the jugular am I right?”  
  
“He ate a man’s hand!” Dick shouts as Jason comes crashing into the park, knocking over a large dumpster to root around in it. “I watched him EAT A MAN’S HAND.”  
  
“Yeah, and? Did he bite his bleedin’ head off? I maybe didn’t get the whole wolf under control but I made a dent in it. Baby steps, and all that.” Constantine plucks yet another smoke from behind his ear and taps it past his lips, lights it up from a flare off his fingertips. “In any case, I’ve got it so we just need to get our boy into the fountain here and he won’t be able to get back out. Probably.”  
  
“Does anything you do just _work_?” Dick’s exasperated voice is drowned out by the low howl of Jason as he bounds into the fountain area, turning his attention on the two men.  
  
“Once again you are lucky to be so blessed by the muses of beauty, dear Richard. You haven’t a fookin clue how magic works.”  
  
“Well, let’s just hope it _does_.” Dick turns and does a half flip to get himself up onto the center structure of the fountain. It’s an odd fit—his feet just barely hang over the edge of the small platform where water bubbles out to spill back down into the basin below. Alright now or never. “JASON!!! COME ON OVER HERE!” Dick beams for a moment as Jason turns to focus his attention solely on him until he understands exactly what that entails when a 250lb wolf comes lunging towards him.  
  
“STAY UP THERE!” Constantine shouts and sends a ball of light whizzing past Jason’s head and into the fountain. “JUST GET HIM INTO THE FOUNTAIN!”  
  
“What do you think I’m doing!? Hanging out!?” Dick says as if he does not spend the majority of his time hanging out atop odd bits of architecture and parapets in large cities.  
  
Jason stops just shy of the edge of the fountain and circles it, snuffling at the edges as he moves.  
  
“Come on, Jason, _you know you want me._ ” Dick shouts before he realizes what he has said. It’s fine. This is fine. Jason’s a wolf, right? He didn’t hear that. Ha hah a this is not the time for this line of thought anyway… “Jason COME ON!” Dick kicks out his leg, and nearly loses his footing against the slippery stone as the water bubbles around his foot. He slides down just a bit, one foot dangling above the top of the water in the fountain’s basin. Dick feels like he’s just kicking his leg around like an enticing bit of bait for Jason. Great, awesome. Well, he supposes this was the plan anyway. He tries to pull himself back up, but the stone structure is too wet, too awkward to get purchase. All Jason needs to do is take one jump across the fountain and his legs would be right in his mouth.  
  
It seems Jason has the same idea.  
  
Everything feels like it happens in slow motion. Jason lunges at Dick. In one moment, Dick’s kicking his legs up, trying to get up and away from the water as best as he can, to pull his apparently delicious legs out of Jason’s reach. In the next, Jason is leaping over the fountain towards him, snarling and snapping his jaws. Dick manages to land one kick to Jason’s face, drawing a low whine from the wolf, and sending his body to crash down into the fountain’s watery basin.  
  
It feels like forever, but in only seconds, the wolf— _Jason,_ Dick reminds himself. Jason—is soggy and sound asleep. Dick looks down as relief washes over him.  
  
“You can drop down love, the sleep bit will only work on him.” Constantine saunters over to the fountain from where he was most definitely hiding behind some benches during that final fracas. He seems cocky, confident, as if his plan had been perfect all along. Dick is too exhausted to be properly angry and lets himself drop down into the barely knee-high water. Weariness washes over him, whether from magic or just several hours of playing keep away from a werewolf, and Dick allows himself to sink down into the water, rests his back against Jason’s sleeping bulk.  
  
“What now?” Dick lets himself flop back against Jason’s slumbering form. His body is warm, and Dick can feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sleeps soundly. Dick tries to resist the urge to pet the wolf. He fails miserably and is absolutely delighted to find that Jason, filthy and matted with _blood_ that he is, is as soft as any dog he has ever pet. Maybe this all isn’t so bad, somehow. Maybe there’s a way to get Jason under control. Maybe Dick has just never been allowed to have a dog in his life and he is really, really touch starved. In any case, Dick smooths his hand through Jason’s fur and marvels at the feeling of petting such an enormous beast.  
  
“Now?” Constantine smirks, foisting his final smoke past his lips. “Now, we gotta get the bastard back into my apartment. I can only keep people off the streets for so long, and I don’t want to have to explain to ol’ Johnny Law why we’re babysitting the wolf that ate their buddy’s hand when they come crawling back.”  
  
Dick eyes the empty hot dog cart tossed aside awkwardly at the edge of the path to the fountain. He lets himself take one last long stroking pet of Jason’s flank before hoisting himself back up. “Alright, well, help me get him up across the hot dog cart. If we put most of his weight across the top, I think we should manage to push him back together. I guess we could grab a big blanket from your apartment and try and drag him up the stairs inside it.”  
  
“See this is why I love you Bats,” Constantine mumbles around his cigarette, “a solution to every problem.”  
  
Dick would punch him right then, but he knows he can’t lift or push Jason by himself. Another time.  
  


  
*  
  
Jason wakes up naked. What’s fucking new? Only this time he seems to be in a bathtub in a dingy bathroom. Well, that’s nice, sort of. At least he isn’t on the _floor_ of the bathroom this time. And he isn’t surrounded by shards of glass. He lets himself move on muscle memory to stand up and turn the water on. First it blasts out icy cold, colder than anything Jason has ever experienced, and he’s been _dead_. Next, the water blasts out as boiling hot as a kettle and Jason leaps back, swearing loudly. He manages to snake his arm past the scalding flow just enough to tap the shower knob aside to get the water back towards Arctic Blast. Good enough.  
  
“You alright in there?” Jason hears Constantine shout through the door. Jason shouts back a noncommittal MMMHMMM and reaches for the only acceptable looking cleansing item—a bougie seeming body wash in a pink bottle labeled “Rose douche pour elle.” Whatever. It smells floral and a bit soothing and Jason feels like he’s been rolling around in a dumpster so anything would be an improvement.

Ok, so he’s in the apartment. Someone left him to uh… change back….. in the tub. What happened?  
  
Jason feels weird, but not in the same way he’s felt weird these past few days. Something feels lighter, a little more focused. Like a shroud that was over him has been lifted away. He feels more like himself than he has in days Jason washes himself under the just-shy-of-too-cold water and tries to remember the events of the night before.  
  
Constantine’s apartment. Dick and Constantine were weird and overly familiar and it made Jason nauseated and okay oh fuck let’s not explore that one too deeply right now. Then Constantine was useless and annoying. Par for the course. Then Jason and Dick maybe almost kissed. Then Dick said he knew Jason wanted him—wait what? DICK WHAT?! The last two thoughts smack Jason in the brain like a cast iron pan and Jason struggles to place whether it was something Dick _actually said_ or something Jason wishes he said deep in the undulating nethers of his subconscious. He can’t place it at all so he’s just going to file that away, possibly forever.  
  
He spends a few more minutes getting clean, managing to find a half-empty bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner tucked behind an obscenely large bottle of _lube_ in the shower. Yikes. Feeling about as clean as he’s going to get in this particular bathroom, Jason steps out onto the already soggy bathmat. There’s a towel waiting for him on the toilet that looks… acceptable, and a pair of sweatpants that have definitely seen better days. Looks like Good Enough is going to be the running theme here.

  
  
When Jason leaves the bathroom, he sees Dick sitting on the couch. The jelly dildo from the evening before is, blessedly, nowhere to be seen.  
  
“Hey puppy, how are you feeling?” Dick smiles at him and Jason feels like all the roiling hell chaos of the past few days melts away. Dick looks radiant. That smile is for _him._  
  
“I’m alright.” Jason says as he sits down next to Dick. And if there’s plenty of room for him to sit down _without_ his knee touching Dick’s, well, neither of them says anything about it. “I’m okay. Are you okay? Is the city okay? I don’t really care if Constantine is okay. Don’t call me puppy.”  
  
“I’m fine, thanks fer askin’!” Constantine shouts from the small galley kitchen off to the side of the living room. He seems to be fussing at the stove, frying something. Jason can smell butter and bacon and he’s far too hungry to give Constantine any more shit.  
  
“I’m fine. Constantine is fine. The city and most of a cop are fine.” Dick smirks and reaches up to push Jason’s wet hair out of his face.  
“That’s good, so I didn’t fuck up anything too mu—wait what? Most of a cop?”  
  
“Yeah, you kind of ate someone’s hand.” Dick says, like this is absolutely no big deal.  
  
“I ATE WHAT?” Jason feels like absolutely every morsel of food he has consumed in the last three days is ready to spew forth in a very Linda Blair moment.  
  
“You didn’t even _eat it,_ you just kind of chewed it a bit and spit it back out when I threw hot dogs at you.” Dick laughs, like the image of this was the funniest thing in the world. Some superhero turned cop turned ex-cop turned superhero he’s supposed to be. Or wait, maybe that’s why it’s funny? Dick always said the NYC cops gave the BPD a run for its corruption money. Heh. Alright, Jason can get behind a little well-placed violence, wolfen or not.  
  
“You know what, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me anything else. You’re okay? I didn’t eat any babies? Good enough. Good fucking enough, don’t tell me another goddamn thing.” Jason flops back against the couch and pushes at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Everything. Happens. So. Fucking. Much.  
  
Dick reaches over, puts a hand on Jason’s knee. “You’re okay, Jason.”  
  
Jason doesn’t feel okay. He feels like okay is a distant shore and he’s just a buoy drifted out to sea but… he does feel more okay than he has since this shit started. “Thanks.” Jason lets his own hand rest on Dick’s knee and gives it a squeeze.  
  
“You lot done canoodling, come get some brekkie.” Constantine thuds a large plate of food down on the cluttered table near the edge of the kitchen.  
  
“We’re not—” Jason starts, but Dick cuts him off by pulling him to his feet and dragging him to the table.

They eat in silence. Jason does most of the eating—eggs, bacon, toast, mushrooms even. It’s a pretty good spread even if Jason doesn’t want to admit Constantine’s cooking is any good. Dick picks at some toast and has a cup of coffee. After a while, Dick clears his throat.  
  
“So uh, what should we do?” Dick asks Constantine.  
  
“Well, that depends. Do you know the wolf that bit Jason? Do you have any idea where it might have come from? Werewolves in the states are rare beasts indeed, I haven’t heard tell of any since the eighties. What you really need to do is find the wolf that bit you, kill it, maybe eat its heart, and then you’re right as rain.” Constantine explains through shoveled bites of messy scrambled egg.  
  
“I uh… I already killed it.” Jason’s pretty sure anyway. He definitely stabbed it very, very well. Though most of that night’s a blur. “I think so anyway. I stabbed it when it bit me. And excuse me, what? Eat it’s what?”  
  
“Did you see it die?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well then, find it, you fucking git.” Constantine smacks Jason upside the head.  
  
Jason growls in response, for once pleased with this new ability. For it, Constantine looks pleasantly cowed. He sits upright in his seat and doesn’t give Jason any more shit for the moment. Dick smiles in that way that crinkles the edges of his eyes. Jason suddenly really, really wants to be called puppy again.  
  
“Okay, so we head back to Gotham and start the search for a huge, wounded wolf or whatever. Seems as good a place to start. And I’m sure there’s some science based way around the heart-eating part of that, if Constantine is even right about it.” Dick says and flicks a piece of egg at the disheveled wizard. He sounds upbeat this morning. Jason wishes he had that resolve.  
  
“Ah, but there’s the rub, my dear detective friends. You’re not looking for any old wolf. You’re looking for a werewolf. And what’s a werewolf when he’s not aware he’s a wolf?”  
  
“We get enough riddles from Nygma, spit it out Constantine.” Jason scowls as he spears the last piece of bacon off Constantine’s plate.  
  
“Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.” Constantine leers, looking extremely pleased with himself.  
  
“Okay, we get it.” Dick offers. “We’re looking for a person. Jason, I know it’s the last place you want to be but I really think we should run this by B and--”  
  
Jason holds up his hand. “Absolutely fucking not.”  
  
Constantine, to his credit, seems to know when to focus on his plate.  
  
“I just think it’d be good if we could use the Cave’s resources and run some tests on you.”  
  
“Cave, maybe. B? No.”  
  
“Well, how’s that going to work?” Dick asks, scrunching his nose. “There’s nothing that happens there that _he_ doesn’t know about.”  
  
“That you guys are aware of, anyway.” Jason smirks. “We can work this out back in Gotham but, I have my ways in and out under the radar.”  
  
Dick’s eyebrows shoot up. “YOU’RE the one who took the plasma weapons out of the cave six months ago.”  
  
“It was Roy’s birthday,” Jason stands and pushes away from the table. He stretches his arms over his head, feels lighter and better than he has in days. “Anyway, I think it’s time we hit the road.”  
  
“Oi, mate, you might want to look into renting a car or somesuch. Yeah, seems a big bad wolf jumped out the hall window yesterday and landed on—"  
  
“My car.” Jason says, sinking back down in his seat.  
  
Dick reaches across the table to run his thumb across Jason’s wrist. “Hey. Heyyyy. It’s not so bad. You barely liked that car. That was the ‘mom’s minivan’ of your cars, you have way cooler cars.”  
  
“Must be fuckin nice.” Constantine mumbles, quite a lot louder than under his breath.  


Dick shoots him a look that says _shut up or I’ll shut you up_ and Jason feels a frizzle of heat dance its way down his spine. He’s always loved it when Dick gets _serious._  
  
“We can take the train. It’s the same amount of time, less even with the traffic. You always loved the train when you were younger.”  
  
“Dickie, we haven’t taken the train together since I was—”  
  
“—fifteen. Yeah. I remember.”  
  
It was Jason’s last birthday before, well. Before he didn’t have another one for a little while. Bruce and Dick had taken him to New York City just after. It was a good time. A good memory. For the first time in a while, Jason feels lucky to be making new ones with Dick.

  
  
Dick cleans up from breakfast while Constantine fishes around in his clothes for something for Jason to wear home. He ends up in a laughably mis-matched outfit of the grubby sweatpants (his thighs do not fit in anything else Constantine has on hand) and a very loud black and white striped flowy shirt that definitely has never belonged to John Constantine. He’s pretty sure it’s a woman’s shirt, and probably out of fashion for like thirty years. He lucks out, at least, that he and Constantine share a shoe size and ends up in an incredibly sad looking pair of sneakers he will probably burn the moment he’s back in Gotham. After all he’s been through the last few days, Jason hopes he does not end up on Subway Creatures of New York.  
  
Dick nearly laughs himself sick when Jason emerges from Constantine’s bedroom.  
  
“Oh come on, _Dick_.” Jason crosses his arms and knows he looks every inch the maniac. “As if you haven’t worn way, way worse.”  
  
“Yeah,” Dick agrees, wiping a tear away, “but I can make _anything_ look good.”

  
  
Constantine waits by the door to send them off. “Well, birdie. It’s been a real treat. When you’re tired of fleas in your bed, you know how to call ol’ Johnny.” He winks, salaciously.

  
“John I, uh, Jason and I aren’t—” Dick blushes and smiles, cheeks dimpling with it. Jason feels a growl simmering in his guts, wants to bare his teeth at Constantine. Instead, Jason grabs Dick by the elbow and starts leading him out of the room.

  
“Thanks for the help, Constantine.” Jason’s all bark as he pulls Dick out into the hallway, kicking the door closed, not looking back at the man chuckling behind them.  
  
He hopes the next part of this misadventure goes better than the last but seeing as it involves anything close to Batman, well…. Jason focuses on the way Dick has looped his arm through his, and they walk arm and arm towards the subway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay well I hope you enjoyed the visual of Dick screaming and throwing hot dogs at Jason because it was a delight to write
> 
> PLEASE kudos and comment my darlings because I have a lot lot more of this bad boy coming up (and much more completed and organized than before!) and I am desperately trying to churn it out way faster and I need any encouragement possible because, let's face it, I am a wretch. Thank you so much for reading. Stay tuned next time when we start to encounter fun shit like.... OH SHIT JASON IS DEFINITELY FEELING EMOTIONS ABOUT DICK. and OH NOOOO ARE THEY GONNA KISS???? and OH HEY I THINK THIS ONE IS THE MAIN BAD GUY and OH NO, BRUCE SHOWS UP


End file.
